Flax Americana
A History of the Fibre and Oil that Covered a Continent
How urban painters and prairie farmers brought a flax and oilseed empire to North America.
Description
Farmers feed cities, but starting in the nineteenth century they painted them too. Flax from Canada and the northern United States produced fibre for textiles and linseed oil for paint – critical commodities in a century when wars were fought over fibre and when increased urbanization demanded expanded paint markets. Flax Americana re-examines the changing relationships between farmers, urban consumers, and the land through a narrative of Canada's first and most important industrial crop. Initially a specialty crop grown by Mennonites and other communities on contracts for small-town mill complexes, flax became big business in the late nineteenth century as multinational linseed oil companies quickly displaced rural mills. Flax cultivation spread across the northern plains and prairies, particularly along the edges of dryland settlement, and then into similar ecosystems in South America's Pampas. Joshua MacFadyen's detailed examination of archival records reveals the complexity of a global commodity and its impact on the eastern Great Lakes and northern Great Plains. He demonstrates how international networks of scientists, businesses, and regulators attempted to predict and control the crop's frontier geography, how evolving consumer concerns about product quality and safety shaped the market and its regulations, and how the nature of each region encouraged some forms of business and limited others. The northern flax industry emerged because of border-crossing communities. By following the plant across countries and over time Flax Americana sheds new light on the ways that commodities, frontiers, and industrial capitalism shaped the modern world.
Reviews
"MacFadyen weaves in the many complex influential factors that shaped flax seed production and discusses not just the labour and business of agriculture but also that of paint manufacturing, paint advertising, and skilled painting labour. [...] The book is an interesting read and will be valuable to agricultural and environmental historians." Histoire sociale/Social history
"Macfadyen has done careful, exhaustive research in farmers' and millers' accounts and government reports. His impressive GIS maps combine census data from the US and Canada. These sources help Macfadyen replace folklore with careful assessments of the crop, its markets and its roles. Along the way he weaves a complex web of considerations around the flax plant itself, which indicates how much goes into crop cultivation. Flax Americana reminds readers that agricultural history is larger than plants, and the environment that influences them includes more than natural phenomena." Environment and History
"This book is careful to qualify its assertions where necessary. Contending that humans both shape and are shaped by flax, the author embraces complexity and avoids descending into extreme determinism or constructivism. Flax Americana is, like the title, written with a certain panache." American Review of Canadian Studies
"MacFadyen ... interrogates photos to great effect, reading between the lines and against the grain to elucidate aspects such as gender and race. Contending that humans both shape and are shaped by flax, the author embraces complexity and avoids descending into extreme determinism or constructivism. Flax Americana is, like the title, written with a certain panache." American Review of Canadian Studies
"This is an impressive study of an important shift in the North American agrarian economy between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1920s. Readers will appreciate the care with which Joshua MacFadyen presents the environmental, economic and labour implications of this transnational agricultural sector and explores issues with novel methodologies." Colin Coates, Glendon College, York University
"Joshua MacFadyen uncovers the complicated story of a striking crop and vital commodity that historians have almost entirely overlooked." Agricultural History Review